MtH #20 LITTLE CAESAR Part one
I Believe In A Benevolent Universe
There are those who would argue that the world is bitter, cold and indifferent to the ordeal that is our existence. That we start life by being ejected violently from the womb in a hurl of blood and mucus and end it usually, in another blast of bodily fluids. And all the trials, travails and tragedies that go on in between, the universe can either A: aggravate B: mitigate or C: ignore. And to these people it certainly isn’t B. So how on earth can we say “life is good”?
Also there are those who would simply say that the universe isn’t sentient and that any attempt to ascribe motive or intent to it is a fools game.
I have a reason that I’ll share with you for supporting this benevolence idea.
Even for sceptics, Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection has to be a pretty good model of how life forms develop over a long time. I’m a big fan. Strangely, the phenomena I’m talking about could be a monkey wrench and could cause those not convinced of Charles D’s genius to throw their hats, hooray-wise, into the air blubbering something idiotic like “We told you so!”
It’s interesting how almost all the functions, behaviours and physical qualities of plants and animals can be understood in terms of a survival advantage. Whenever, through mutation, an organism changes in some way to become better at surviving, it increases its chances to reproduce and pass that bonus mutant gene on…..blah blah blah. We’ve all heard this stuff.
So what do you do with something that exists among sentient creatures and has no survival imperative?
There’s a peace that comes over the animals and people that I’ve witnessed dying. I’ve read about it and I’ve heard nurses who work in palliative care speak about it. Not very scientific, but my guess is that it’s probably measurable. I know peace is an active thing. It’s caused by chemicals reacting with specific receptors. So how could this process, this startling combination of neurology and spirit that gently ushers us out, be the result of natural selection? And how could it exist in a malevolent or a static universe?
Happy The Flatulent Cat
Patti and I maintained a colony of fifteen or so feral cats for a period of time. The alpha or “Top” cat was a sleek all black male we named Puma. For a year at least we had been noticing these cats travelling between our house and the one to the north. They would move alone or in small groups and we never saw them all together. That is, untii we started to feed them. The females and kittens would eat first. This seemed to be enforced by Puma who sat above them on a lawn chair. Then the rest would eat and if there was any order to it, it was beyond us, it seemed like it was every male cat for himself.
Our interference in their lives at the time amounted to nothing more than improving their food supply. That would change quickly.
Puma showed up one morning with an ugly, greenish-brown swelling over his right eye. It was oozing puss. It just got worse the next day. We decided we had to do something so I went shopping for a trap. I found one at Canadian Tire, got it home, set it up with sardines as bait and ten minutes later I had a very pissed off cat in a cage. To make a long story shorter, the vet scraped out the infection which would certainly have killed him and maybe drove him insane first, put his head in a plastic cone which did drive him insane. He had to stay at the vet’s for a week and then another week at least at our place. This began a systematic capture plan that would see us neuter or spay and fix any health problems for the whole colony which included convalescence in my studio. No matter what the cats thought of my piano playing, they were stuck with it for one or two weeks.
Gradually the population stabilized. There’s been no kittens for years. The life span of a feral cat averages between four and five years. Some of the cats were getting close to that. Along the way, some of the cats were suitable for adoption. Combine those factors with a senseless roundup and consequent euthanasia by Animal Control in 2010 that cost us two, maybe three cats and the size of the colony dwindled to just three regulars. It reached that level three years ago and has remained the same.
One cat that we found a home for was a real oddball. Half cat and half dog was how we described him. He was heavy set with short legs and a big wide face that had a perpetual snarl etched into it. His menacing looks however, belied a gentle bear who would dig his claw retracted paws into your legs as he sat for hours on your lap……….drooling and farting.
I’ve asked around and it seems nobody has ever heard a cat pass wind. I suppose their rear ends are built for speed, not resonance. But when this cat let one go you’d clearly hear it and it’s a good thing too because it provided a warning to everyone present. And that warning was:
YOU HAVE FIVE SECONDS TO CLEAR THE ROOM
You know what’s weird? That snarly belligerent look so typical of him would fade for a few moments and I swear to god, he would smile.
Next issue: Happy The Farting Cat reinvents himself as Little Caesar